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California State University
General Education - Breadth Requirements Criteria
From Office of the Chancellor
California State University
Executive Order No. 595
| A. |
A minimum of nine semester units
or twelve quarter units in communication in the English language, to include both
oral communication and written communication, and in critical thinking, to include
consideration of common fallacies in reasoning.
Instruction approved for fulfillment of the requirement in communication is to
be designed to emphasize the content of communication as well as the form and should
provide an understanding of the psychological basis and the social significance of
communication, including how communication operates in various situations. Applicable
course(s) should view communication as the process of human symbolic interaction
focusing on the communicative process from the rhetorical perspective: reasoning
and advocacy, organization, accuracy; the discovery, critical evaluation and reporting
of information; reading and listening effectively as well as speaking and writing.
This must include active participation and practice in written communication and
oral communication.
Instruction in critical thinking is to be designed to achieve an understanding of
the relationship of language to logic, which should lead to the ability to analyze,
criticize, and advocate ideas, to reason inductively and deductively, and to reach
factual or judgmental conclusions based on sound inferences drawn from unambiguous
statements of knowledge or belief. The minimal competence to be expected at the successful
conclusion of instruction in critical thinking should be the demonstration of skills
in elementary inductive and deductive processes, including an understanding of the
formal and informal fallacies of language and thought, and the ability to distinguish
matters of fact from issues of judgment or opinion. |
B. |
A minimum of twelve semester units or eighteen quarter units to include inquiry
into the physical universe and its life forms, with some immediate participation
in laboratory activity, and into mathematical concepts and quantitative reasoning
and their applications.
Instruction approved for the fulfillment of this requirement is intended to impart
knowledge of the facts and principles which form the foundations of living and non-living
systems. Such studies should promote understanding and appreciation of the methodologies
of science as investigative tools, the limitations of scientific endeavors: namely,
what is the evidence and how was it derived? In addition, particular attention should
be given to the influence which the acquisition of scientific knowledge has had on
the development of the world's civilizations, not only as expressed in the past but
also in present times. The nature and extent of laboratory experience is to be determined
by each campus through its established curricular procedures. In specifying inquiry
into mathematical concepts and quantitative reasoning and their application, the
intention is not to imply merely basic computational skills, but to encourage as
well the understanding of basic mathematical concepts. |
C. |
A minimum of twelve semester units or eighteen quarter units among the arts, literature,
philosophy and foreign languages.
Instruction approved for the fulfillment of this requirement should cultivate intellect,
imagination, sensibility and sensitivity. It is meant in part to encourage students
to respond subjectively as well as objectively to experience and to develop a sense
of the integrity of emotional and intellectual response. Students should be motivated
to cultivate and refine their affective as well as cognitive and physical faculties
through studying great works of the human imagination, which could include active
participation individual esthetic, creative experience. Equally important is the
intellectual examination of the subjective response, thereby increasing awareness
and appreciation in the traditional humanistic disciplines such as art, dance, drama,
literature and music. The requirement should result in the student's better understanding
of the interrelationship between the creative arts, the humanities and self. Studies
in these areas should include exposure to both Western cultures and non-Western cultures.
Foreign language courses may be included in this requirement because of their implications
for cultures both in their linguistic structures and in their use in literature;
but foreign language courses which are approved to meet a portion of this requirement
are to contain a cultural component and not be solely skills acquisition courses.
Campus provisions for fulfillment of this requirement must include a reasonable distribution
among the categories specified as opposed to the completion of the entire number
of units required in one category. |
D. |
A minimum of twelve semester units or eighteen quarter units dealing with human
social, political, and economic institutions and behavior and their historical background.
Instruction approved for fulfillment of this requirement should reflect the fact
that human social, political and economic institutions and behavior are inextricably
interwoven. Problems and issues in these areas should be examined in their contemporary
as well as historical setting, including both Western and non Western contexts. Campus
provisions for fulfillment of this requirement must include a reasonable distribution
among the categories specified as opposed to completion of the entire number of units
required in one category. |
E. |
A minimum of three semester units or four quarter units in study designed to equip
human beings for lifelong understanding and development of themselves as integrated
physiological and psychological entities.
Instruction approved for fulfillment of this requirement should facilitate understanding
of the human being as an integrated physiological, social, and psychological organism.
Courses developed to meet this requirement are intended to include selective consideration
of such matters as human behavior, sexuality, nutrition, health, stress, key relationships
of humankind to the social and physical environment, and implications of death and
dying. Physical activity could be included, provided that it is an integral part
of the study described herein. |
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